May 18 - Light Precipitation at Nipika and Fortress

NIPIKA

A day with steady light rainfall

Cécile and Selina arrived at Nipika weather station at 0700 MDT (1300 UTC) to find an eerily quiet morning shrouded in fog. There was gentle precipitation throughout the morning. Although the fog never lifted entirely, at one point there was a faint outline of the sun, and birdsong erupted from the surrounding forest. The anemometer barely moved throughout the morning, and nor did the researchers as they huddled beneath the tarp in an unusually chilly temperatures ranging from 4-6°C. However, between observations, the researchers did manage to venture a couple hundred of metres to the west to visit a canyon where the Kootenay River was running luminescent green. Cécile and Selina enjoyed some mud bogging on the way to pass the torch to Hadleigh and André at Nipika Resort. The event follows with very light to light rainfall until it stopped completely at 1620 MDT. This event was markedly clearing from the southern quadrant, revealing the fresh snow that fell on the mountains above the Kootenay River valley.

- Selina and André

Field Participants: Cécile Carton, André Bertoncini, Hadleigh Thompson & Selina Mitchell

FORTRESS

A daytime event (May 18 MDT)

For a third consecutive day, Aurélie and I (Charlie) left BGI very early in the morning on May 18 to go into the field. Fortunately, the sun was already up before we left, precipitation was very light (almost negligible), and visibility was way better than the previous day. We even saw some elk on the side of the road during our drive! We started observations as soon as we arrived at 1300 UTC. The snow intensity was light to moderate, the temperature was around -2°C, and the wind was negligible. Conditions stayed fairly constant for the first few hours, which permitted us to observe lots of plates, columns with dendrites, plates or multiple plates, and aggregates of plates. We had a lull between 1730 UTC and 1930 UTC with had only a couple of flakes. It was hard to identify these flakes because they were already partially melted by the time they landed on the velvet pad. During the next hour, the intensity of the snowfall increased rapidly, and gave us lots of graupel and needles, before it stopped completely just in time for the arrival of Juris and Hilary.
 
-Charlie
 
Juris and I (Hilary) arrived at Fortress Mountain to replace Charlie and Aurélie at 2038 UTC on May 18. We saw some rain on our drive from BGI, but it stopped completely by the time we reached the gate at the bottom of the road. When we arrived at the top of Fortress, precipitation was very light, almost negligible. We took over observations from Charlie and Aurélie and observed very small and very heavily rimed dendrites and irregulars. Winds were light from the SE. We were only able to take one photo over the course of our observations. Total precipitation accumulation over the course of the event was 3.6 cm with a SWE of 6.5 mm. We made our last observation at 2300 UTC and then left to head to Fortress Junction to download the data from this event and the previous events, and then to head back to BGI.

It was a very calm ending to a busy few days with lots of precipitation events. 
 
-Hilary
 
 
Field Participants: Juris Almonte, Hilary Smith, Charlie Hébert-Pinard, & Aurélie Desroches Lapointe 

Nipika

Fortress